Kansas farmers spend holiday in fields
HUTCHINSON (AP) -- Some years, farmers harvesting the state's winter wheat crop might be able to take a break for Independence Day.
Weather-permitting, the harvest may even be done in some parts of Kansas by the Fourth of July.
But this year has been different.
"I'd be celebrating," 90-year-old Reno County farmer Victor Stade said Friday, "but the wheat price is so high and you have to get to it before Mother Nature does."
The later harvest is attributed to several factors, including a late planting in the fall and a wet and cool early summer that prevented the wheat from maturing as fast as it usually would.
The 80-acre field where Stade was cutting was making better than 50 bushels to the acre this season. Stade, who has been farming since his high school days, was cutting wheat Friday less than a mile from where he was born in 1918.
He recalled early Fourth of July holidays on the family farm.
"We shot firecrackers under tin cans," he said, chuckling at the memory. "Once in a while, a tin can would hit someone in the ear."
Stade's son, Roger Stade, was also working Friday, in a field about three miles southeast of his father.
"As a farmer, I prefer to be working," Roger Stade said, regarding the holiday. "We work 24/7 and hopefully have time off in the winter."
A friend, Karen Colley, set out a folding table with pans of grilled steaks, garlic potatoes and broccoli at the edge of the field.
"Got to feed the guys and the employees," said Colley, who recently moved home to Reno County from Florida to help her family on the farm. Had she still been in the Orlando area, the day would have meant a picnic and party with friends.
Meanwhile, at the Mid Kansas Co-op in Haven, local manager Tim Lesslie said the wheat coming in is losing its high grade.
"It's not No. 1 anymore. The last rain dropped the test weight a couple pounds, enough to get it under 60 pounds. That is not terrible. But it's not No. 1 weight," he said.
The elevator was open Friday and Saturday, but harvest had slowed down enough that it planned to close Sunday.
Leslie said it wasn't the first Independence Day he has had to work.
"It's just part of the job," he said.
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